Her eyes went back and forth, searching inside mine.

'We've got a computer sketch of the guy all over town,' I said, 'I don't think he'll come back.'

'Then who killed the man in the hospital?'

'I don't know.'

'He's out there, Dave. I know he is.'

Her experience with Buchalter had been even worse than mine, and I knew that my words could not take the unrelieved sense of vulnerability out of her face. I held her against me, then walked her into the bedroom, turned on the shower, waited while she got inside the stall, locked the house, then said Alafair's prayers with her. The moon was down, the pecan and oak trees were motionless and black outside the screens, and the only sound I could hear besides the suck of the attic fan was Tripod running up and down on his chain and wire clothesline.

I poured a glass of milk, fixed a ham and onion sandwich, and ate it at the kitchen table. When the phone on the wall rang, I knew who I would be talking to.

His voice sounded as though he were waking from sleep, or as, though he had been disturbed during copulation. It was in slow motion, with a click to it, deep in his throat, that was both phlegmy and dry at the same time.

'It doesn't have to be bad between us.'

'What doesn't?'

'You, me, your wife. Y'all could be part of us.'

'Buchalter, you've got to understand this. I can't wave a wand over the gulf and bring up a depth-charged sub. I think you're a sick man. But if I get you in my sights, I'm going to take you off at the neck.'

Again, I heard a wet, clicking sound, like his tongue sticking to the insides of his cheeks.

'I like you,' he said.

'You like me?'

'Yes. A great deal.'

I waited before I spoke again.

'What do you think is going to happen the next time I see you?' I said.

'Nothing.'

'Nothing?'

'You'll come around to our way. It's a matter of time.'

My palm was squeezed damply on the receiver.

'Listen, every cop in Iberia Parish knows what you look like. They know what you've done, they're not big on procedure. Don't make the mistake of coming back here. I'm telling you this as a favor.'

'We can give you power.'

You're learning nothing. Change the subject.

'I know where you've been in New Orleans,' I said. 'You talked too much about music. You left a trail, Buchalter.'

'I could have hurt you the other night, in ways you can't dream about, but I didn't,' he said. 'Do you want to hear how they reach a point where they beg, what they sound like when they beg?'

'Will you meet with me?'

I heard him drinking from a glass, deeply, swallowing like a man who had walked out of a great, dry heat.

'Because I'm different, you shouldn't treat me as though I'm psychotic. I'm not. Good night,' he said. 'Tell your wife I remember our moment with fondness. She's a beautiful specimen of her gender.'

He hung up the receiver as gently as a man completing a yawn.

My heart was racing inside my chest. My pistol was still clipped to my belt. I unsnapped the holster, slipped the.45 out of the leather, which I had rubbed with saddle soap, and ran my fingers along the coolness of the metal. The balls of my fingers left delicate prints in the thin sheen of oil. I released the magazine from the butt, rubbed my thumb over the brass casing of the top round, pulled the slide back and forth, then shoved the magazine back into the butt. The grips felt hard and stiff inside my hand.

I looked through the window into the dark. I wanted Buchalter to be out there, perhaps parking his car behind a grove of trees, working his way across the fields, confident that this time he could pull it off, could invade my house and life with impunity. And this time-

I put the.45 on the nightstand in our bedroom and undressed in the dark. My own skin felt as dry and hot as a heated lamp shade. Bootsie was still asleep when I moved on top of her, between her legs, without invitation or consent, a rough beast who could have been hewn out of desert stone.

I made love to her as a starving man might. I put my tongue deep in her mouth and tasted the whiskey and candied cherries and sliced oranges deep in her wet recesses. I plummeted into her fecund warmth, I inhaled the alcohol out of her breath, I robbed her of the golden and liquid heat that had been aged in oak and presented mistakenly as a gift to her heart's blood rather than to mine.

The early sun looked like a sliver of pink ice, just above the horizon's misty rim, when I stopped my truck at the locked entrance to Tommy Lonighan's driveway. I got out of the truck and pushed the button on the speaker box.

'Who is it?' the voice of the man named Art said.

'Detective Dave Robicheaux. I'm here to see Tommy.'

'He's busy.'

'No, he's not.'

'The last time you were here you were busting up people with a shovel.'

'Yesterday's box score, Art.'

'It's seven o'clock in the fucking morning. How about some slack?'

'Are you going to open up or not? If not, I can come back with a warrant that has your name on it.'

'Is Purcel with you?'

'No.'

'You sure?'

'Last chance, Art.'

'Okay, take it easy, I'm buzzing you in. Tommy's out back. I'll tell him you're here. Hey, can you do me a favor?'

'What?'

'It's a nice day. The Indian and me are serving breakfast for Tommy and his guests out on the terrace. Let's keep it a nice day. Okay, man? Shit don't go good with grits and eggs.'

A minute later I parked my truck at the end of Lonighan's drive. The interior of the compound was the architectural and landscaped antithesis of everything in the Irish Channel neighborhood where Tommy had grown up. His imitation Tudor house was surrounded by citrus and pine and oak trees; steam rose from the turquoise surface of his screened-in pool and his coral goldfish ponds; the Saint Augustine grass was thick and wet from soak hoses, shining with dew in the hazy light. Beyond his protective brick walls, I could hear canvas sails flapping and swelling with wind on the lake.

He was behind the house, in an orange bikini swimsuit and a pair of black high-top ring shoes, thudding his taped fists into what looked like a six-foot stack of sandbags. His pale body, which rippled with sweat, Was the color and texture of gristle. A tubular, red scar, with tiny pink stitch holes on each side, wound in a serpentine line from his right kidney up to his shoulder blade.

He stopped hitting the bags when he saw me, and wiped his meringue hair and armpits with a towel. His flushed face smiled broadly.

'You're just in time to eat,' he said, pulling the adhesive tape off his hands. 'How about this weather? I think we got ourselves an early fall.' He flipped his towel on top of an azalea bush. His knuckles were round and hard and protruded from his skin as though he were holding a roll of quarters in each hand.

'You work out on sandbags, Tommy?'

'Cement. If you don't bust your hand or jam your wrist on a cement bag, you sure ain't gonna do it on a guy's face. What's up, Dave?'

'I've got a big problem with this guy Buchalter. He can't seem to stay out of my life.'

'If I can help, let me know.' He worked a blue jumper over his head as we walked down a gravel path toward a glass-topped table on his patio, where an ash blond woman in a terry-cloth robe was drinking coffee and reading the paper. 'I don't want a guy like this around, either. He gives the city a bad reputation.'

'I didn't say he was from New Orleans, Tommy.'

'You wouldn't be here unless you thought he was. Sit down and eat. You're too serious. Charlotte, this is Dave Robicheaux.'

She lowered her paper and looked at me with eyes that had the bright, blue tint of colored contact lenses, that were neither rude nor friendly, curious or wary. I suspected that she read news accounts of airline disasters with the same level of interest as the weather report. Her freckled, sun-browned skin had the smooth folds in it of soft tallow.